Copenhagen- Øresund - Malmö: city borders and construction of the landscape

The potentialities of urban design can be understood by looking at its character of permanence or its ability to accept transformations, without loosing its founding principles. Today it is necessary to reflect on the different topics collected under the definition “urban design”. There are some paradigmatic cases that lead us to express an interpretative line, which comprises different concepts - city, landscape, environment, infrastructure etc. - without aiming to outline the specialised distinction of them, but rather trying to consider the intersection of disciplines as the specific field of action of composition. The coasts of the Øresund - the strait of water that separates Denmark from Sweden - can be seen as the contraposition of two long “stage settings”, where sequences of urban facts face each other. Copenhagen and Malmö are located near the wider point of the sound: two merchant harbours oriented toward the see, but at the same time two fortresses developed in connection to the land lying behind. Starting from 2000, the shores are connected by the Øresund Bridge, the longest bridge in Europe. This connection shifts the centre of the problem from the urban development to a territorial scale: every transformation of the two cities is linked to the bigger scenario of the international Øresund Region. The paper aims to show some cases of this urban and territorial transformation to point out how the two cities, poles of a renewed tension, mould their shapes, borders and limits. Moreover, with the introduction of a new “character” in the middle of the strait, the construction of the waterfronts undertakes a central role; the itineraries that reach the connection point and the areas with a strategic position are characterized with recognizable landmarks, that build a new type of landscape: a big unique city where built signs are related to natural elements with a great visual impact. Thus the pattern of the two ancient fortresses can be interpreted as the original signs of this territorial construction, where architecture affirms itself as a synthesis between nature and culture. In Copenhagen the imprint of the great ramparts of Christian IV remains as a permanent trace: the feature of the defensive works not only refers to itself, its style or its time, but to an archetype that belongs to the collective consciousness. According to that the permanence of the Fingerplanen of the 1947 is evident, not just because the new expansions of the city follow the path designed by the five fingers, separated by green wedges, rather because the plan describes an approach that confirms its appropriateness with the recent introduction of the Amager “extra finger”. Here the new town Ørestad is growing: a city designed as a long and narrow garden with roads, canal and parks, where new buildings are stamped as a negative feature. Regardless of the different results achieved by each project analyzed, the study of this experience creates the opportunity to reflect on the city transformations. For that reason it is possible to recognize a field of work where the city is oriented toward the future but rooted to its memory, where the plan can affirm a human scale without loosing the straight of a clear design in a larger scale, where technological innovations - intended as tools and not as generative elements for the design - collaborate with the plan.